


roman holiday

by janie_tangerine



Series: charity commissions 2018 [6]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, M/M, Multi, Roma | Rome, Satire, Subways, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Tourism, literal handling of italian trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 22:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16921509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: in which Rey, Poe, Finn and Kylo go visit their friend Rose who’s studying in Rome and end up experiencing the current administration.features: fridges in the middle of the trash, sudden holes in the ground, stuck subways and bad public transport.A/N: everything depicted in this fic actually happens/has happened irl. I know.





	roman holiday

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY SO I wrote this as a charity commission on tumblr this year but I hadn't reposted it here because it's honestly ridiculous... except that if tumblr kills itself then I don't want to lose it. 
> 
> The original prompt (from tumblr user tombliboos) was: _Reylo/Stormpilot Modern AU. Trip to Rome. Rey, Ben, Finn and Poe are visiting Rose who’s studying in Rome. They get stuck in traffic. Their car falls into a hole. They hear noises at night and people are leaving fridges on the street. Poe orders cappuccino after 11am and the barista refuses to serve him. Rose explains that according to her Italian friends, the new mayor can’t do shit. Bonus if at some point it starts raining and they get blocked in the flooded subway._ I would just like everyone to know that a) I live in Rome, b) EVERYTHING IS *NOT* EXAGGERATED. This also has a fair amount of satire but idk if it's obvious to non-italians that said I hope it's funny at least. OKAY I'M DONE.
> 
> Also: I own nothing, the title is from the eponymous movie and honestly yes, the administration is *this* incompetent, and be glad I didn't discuss last year's Christmas Tree which was dead on December 15th.

****

> **Episode One: The Phantom Airport**
> 
>  

“Guys,” Finn says excitedly as their plane lands on the ground. “ _Guys_. Can you believe we’re in  _Italy_?”

“Not to rain on your parade, but are you aware this is about the twentieth time you’ve said that since we left?”

“ _Ben_ , let him live, not all of us have been here twice already,” Rey says, putting an arm on her… well, Finn calls him  _almost-boyfriend_ and she’s not so sure she’s going to live it down because they’ve been dancing around each other since the first time they argued during their joint political studies class, but for now she’ll just settle for… friends. Probably.

The fact that he rolls his eyes and doesn’t pursue the topic gains her a  _look_  from Poe, who’s sitting next to Finn and looking like he’s going to burst in laughter.

“Don’t you  _dare_ ,” Rey hisses in his direction.

“Fine, fine,“ he says, raising his hands up in defeat. “I’m going to keep my mouth shut. But  _yes_ , we’re in Italy, good thing because these seats are cramped. Hey, what did Rose say we should do?”

Finn takes his phone from his jacket’s pocket —  _formally_  Poe’s jacket but he hasn’t worn it in months, since they met, and why did  _they_  get to have the love at first sight moment and Rey still hasn’t quite figured out how to tell Ben she actually is  _into him_?

Then again, when the guy you’re into seems to have a bunch of frankly horrid friends and is a TA for your political sciences professor and then it turns out that the aforementioned professor is treating him so badly (including convincing him to  _change his name legally, what the hell —_ good thing he’s gone back on it, even if he uses the changed name for anyone that’s not her or his parents for reasons she still hasn’t brought herself to ask) that he gets a full-on nervous breakdown among the rest, and after he ends up dumping all his old friends in exchange for being friends with  _you_  and, in turn, actually getting along with  _your_  friends, pushing it is hardly what you should do. According to Rey, at least.

She’ll come clean with him. Just not  _during this trip_ , since they’re  _all_ supposed to relax and not to get even more stressed.

“Uh, after we get the bags we should take the train from the airport’s station and she’d come get us, she’s rented a car. We can either pay a lot for one that goes to the main station in half an hour or pay half that for the one that goes to the secondary one and takes one hour.”

“ _One hour_ ,” Ben mutters, but then says nothing else.

“Well,” Rey says, “I’m good with saving money. We can get the cheap one.”

“Fair,” Poe agrees, “we don’t have to start wasting money  _now_  if we’re staying for two weeks. Right. Guys, let’s go grab our bags and catch up on jet lag, my legs are cramped.”

The four of them leave the plane and go to the baggage reclaiming area.

That goes well — they only wait some twenty minutes for all of their suitcases to be delivered, and they follow the signs towards the train station.

And  _then_  —

“Guys,” Poe says, “ _why_  is the entire thing filled with queues? That… doesn’t look normal.”

Rey looks at the small train station — there’s people _in the hundreds_ queueing outside the tickets booths.

“That — yeah, that looks weird. Finn, can you —“

A moment later, Finn’s phone rings.

“Right. Hey, Rose, what’s up? Yeah, we just got here —  _what_? Ah. Oh, right, I get it.  _What_? Fuck. Right, I’ll tell them and we’ll let you know.”

He closes the call.

“Seems like there was a malfunction at the main train station. I mean, some malfunction to the centraline handling the traffic. So — all trains are blocked in the entire area.”

“ _All_  of them?” Poe asks.

“Yeah. She checked the news and they’re down until later tonight. She said either we get a bus or a taxi, but it’s going to be a long wait and we shouldn’t bother with this.”

“… I guess we should go and check the situation,” Rey says, and she heads out of the airport, the other three following behind.

“Wow,” she whistles.

“Fuck,” Poe echoes.

“ _Shit_ ,” Finn says.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Ben says, and —

Given that the line for the bus stop starts five feet from where they are and the buses are  _way_  farther down the road, enough that they can’t  _see_  them, and that the taxi line is  _longer than that_ , they can barely see the ending from where they are.from where they are.

“How long do you think we might have to wait?” Finn asks Poe, sounding very discouraged.

“Er, I’d say at least a couple hours whatever choice we pick,” Poe replies after assessing the situation.

“… Yeah, not happening,” Ben says at once.

“What —” Rey starts, but before she can finish he has grabbed the wallet in the back of his pants, taken three hundred euros out of it and —

_Stalked towards the first taxi in line_?

“Oh, no,” Poe groans. "That’s not really how it works — Solo, er,  _Ren_ , there’s a damned line!”

Before he can make that point, though, all three of them have run after him, and —

Rey can only helplessly watch as he pretty much elbows his way into the queue without as much as an  _excuse me_ , stops the first taxi and offers the driver the three hundred to skip the line.

Which the driver accepts, in the middle of  _very loud protesting._

“So, are you three coming or do you want to wait until dawn?” He asks, opening the door, still with people screaming at him in outrage in at least fifteen different languages.

“Well,” Finn says, “he’s gone that far, we might as well take the damned taxi.”

Poe looks at Rey. She shrugs — it’s a lot war.

“Fine,  _but never again_. Shit, my mom would kill me if she knew I was doing this,” he mutters as he grabs his suitcases and reaches the taxi.

Ten minutes later, he’s in the front and Rey’s in the back in between Ben and Finn and Finn’s calling Rose and telling her they managed to find a taxi by  _some kind of miracle_  and could she please give him the address.

“Is  _some kind of miracle_  a code for  _Kylo Ren skipped the queue_?” Rey hears over the phone.

“How would you know that?” Finn asks, surprised.

“It’s all over Italian Youtube,” Rose replies.

“This is really starting well,  _dios_ ,” Poe groans before it turns out that the taxi driver speaks Spanish and they end up talking for the next forty-five minutes.

Rey  _honestly_  hopes that this is not how this entire vacation is going to go.

 

> **Episode Two: Attack of the Sudden Holes in the Ground**

 

Three days later, Finn decides that maybe the whole airport failure had just been a misfortune. After all, other than  _that_ , everything has been great. The food is great, the weather is great, Rose has been here for months so she’s being an excellent guide and she’s also saved them a lot of money they might have wasted on tourist traps,  _Kylo Ren_  (Finn’s just waiting for the day he’s going to let everyoneother than Rey using his real name, honestly) has actually looked nothis usual gloomy self while going around the Coliseum and the Roman Forum  _for once_ , the sun is hot enough that it’s  _nice_  but not enough to burn and certainly strong enough that Poe’s tanned some already and  _surely_  Finn appreciates the sight, especially since it means he’s going around without a jacket (hey, a man has  _eyes_  and they’re together, he’s not going to complain).

All in all, he thinks, if the next two weeks go like this, it’s going to be the  _best_  time of his life.

If he thinks that until now he has never even set foot outside the US and no one at his group home would have bet a cent on him getting into college with a free ride where if you want you can go abroad for an entire year… well, he needs to send good old Ms. Phasma a postcard, she’d seethe knowing he went places.

“So,” Poe tells Rose, who’s driving, suddenly dragging him out of that line of thought, “what did you say I should check?”

“Just open Maps and check if we have some traffic in front of us. Hopefully not, but — oh,  _shit_.”

She brakes. Finn raises his head from the tour book he had been reading, his side hitting the door of the car — better that than Rey, though, who’s still in between him and Ren. He doesn’t know why the man just doesn’t sit up front since he’s the tallest of all of them, but he knows he wouldn’t get an answer, so he doesn’t bother asking.

“Is — that —  _normal_?” He asks, noticing that they’re now stuck in traffic and that  _no one_  is moving bar a few motorcycles that he’s halfway sure are breaking at least ten laws at once.

“Sadly, yes,” Rose sighs, and she lowers the window, stopping someone on a Vespa going in the opposite way and asking something in Italian. The guy replies before driving away and a moment later her head meets the wheel as she puts the clutch into neutral.

“That doesn’t look good…?” Rey asks, tentatively.

“Er,” Rose says, “there’s been some kinda wreck a kilometer ahead and we’re not going to be able to move until they clear it up. Which is going to be long. Unless — ah,  _fuck,”_ she sighs as rain starts to hit their windshield.

"What’s the problem…?” Poe asks. “It’s just rain.”

“Driving while it rains  _here_  is a gamble,” she sighs. “Well, buckle up because we’re gonna be here for one hour at least.”

It’s  _not_  the worst hour of Finn’s life, even if most of it is because his boyfriend is a superior human being and manages to keep a conversation going enough to distract everyone from their current predicament, and  _finally_  forty minutes later they start going somewhere — the cars in front of them clear slightly and at least Rose can drive.

“Right,” she says, “good thing that going like this it’s just another fifteen minutes —  _oh_ , fuck!”

When she brakes  _now_ , it’s hard enough that Poe’s head hits the car’s window and Rey ends up sprawled on Ren’s side, not that  _he_  seems to complain, and before Finn can ask what the fuck was Rose thinking, he looks ahead and —

“Guys, is that a fucking _hole in the ground_?” That arrives  _just under the car_ , so they’re about to fall  _right into it_?

“Not the first nor the last,” Rose sighs, turning the car off. “Right. I’ll call the cops, they probably haven’t even left yet.”

And that’s how they spend the next half hour around the hole in the ground while Rose talks to the cops, under the rain — Poe shares his umbrella with Finn, good thing he brought one, but it doesn’t fit four people.

That said, given that Ren’s given Rey his jacket and is now discussing with another cop while his dress shirt gets wet, he’s sure Rey’s not complaining.

Ren comes back not long later, looking outraged. “Can you believe that it’s apparently a thing that’s been happening for months because there’s no maintenance in the roads? How can someone be so  _incompetent_? Even bloody  _Hux_  would be better at being a mayor than anyone in charge here,” he mutters.

“Are you  _complimenting_  Hux?” Poe asks, laughing. Given that Hux is the other guy who was going to be Snoke’s TA and they both  _loathed_ each other openly, this must be frankly bad. Finn is not even going to get into it — he’s never even talked to the guy while Poe spends his time trying to rile him up on purpose, so he  _would_  know.

“I’m an objective person,” Ren shrugs. “I hate him, that doesn’t mean he’s  _incompetent_.”

“Guys,” Rose says, coming back, wrapped in Finn’s jacket — right, that’s Poe’s jacket, but he currently lended it to her because she had a sleeveless shirt and  _she_  had to talk to the cops —, “we’re good to go but the car’s busted. They’ll get someone to bring it to a mechanic’s and then insurance is dealing with it. But they offered to drive us to the next bus stop.”

Better than nothing, Finn decides.

The subsequent bus ride is only memorable because the bus is stocked  _so full_  of people that no one would accuse him of groping his boyfriend in public for being plastered all over Poe’s side without an inch of space between them.

“Well,” Poe whispers, not that anyone would hear them given the noise, “you  _do_  know that the moment we get home I’m tearing your clothes off?”

“ _Please_  do, I’m going to need it,” Finn groans.

Admittedly, when they do finally get home an hour and a half later, the sex is downright glorious — at least  _that_.

But seriously,  _holes opening in the middle of the street_? What kinda fuckery is  _that_?

 

> **Chapter Three: The Revenge of the Fridge**

 

Rose is fixing breakfast when suddenly her phone rings.

She checks it — she hopes it’s not anyone from uni, but they’re on break, too, and her classmates knew she was having friends over.

No, it’s —

Why would Kylo call her when he’s technically  _right downstairs_? He volunteered to throw away the trash before going on a morning run and he left five minutes ago, what could have happened?

“Yeah?” She answers, taking the call. “What’s wrong?”

“How did you know something might be wrong?” He asks.

“Well, why would you call me when you were here five minutes ago?”

“… Fair. Uh, well, it’s just — can you  _please_  come down a moment?”

“Okay, give me a moment.” She turns off the stove under her coffee machine and grabs her keys. Right, she’s in her pjs, but no one will mind.

She gets down the stairs and out of the gate, where Kylo’s standing with the trash in his hand, still, and —

_Oh_.

“I mean,” he says, “never mind that I’m not quite sure of where I should throw this, but… why is there a  _fridge_  in the middle of the trash cans?”

In the middle of trash cans that are overflowing, for the matter, so of course he doesn’t know where he should throw away the trash in question.

She sighs and takes a picture of the scene.  “I send that to a blog documenting this kinda stuff,” she explains. “Hand it over.”

She takes the trash from him and goes to the paper trash bin — of course it’s overflowing, but never mind that. She pushes it at the top, hoping it’ll stay put, and goes back to the gate. “Just go on that run, it’s useless.”

“But — that’s  _trash_! In the middle of the road!”

“I  _know_ ,” Rose sighs, “but it’s been like this since I came here. Can’t do anything about it.”

“Jesus,” he mutters, “Hux  _really_  could do better, and that’s saying all.”

Then he’s off running.

Rose goes back upstairs and finishes brewing the coffee.

——

“Rose,” Poe asks not long later after he glances out of the window, “is that a  _fridge_  in the middle of the street?”

“Yeah.”

“But  _why_?”

“A friend explained me that — well, the trash company has an agreement with another company to handle the large stuff like fridges and laundry machines. Except that the contract has expired and the mayor has to renew it but hasn’t yet, so she might have forgot or something.”

“The hell, how do you  _forget_ that?” He asks, obviously not too comforted, but then he grins, and — “Finn, put something on, we  _totally_  have to go take pictures with that!”

“What? Why would you take pictures  _with a broken fridge_?”

“Are you serious? What better Facebook profile photo than me standing next to a bonafide  _fridge_  in the middle of the road?”  
  
“You’re completely insane!” Rose calls after him, drinking her espresso.

Poe doesn’t deny  _that_ , but an hour later he, Finn and Rey are choosing what pictures to upload on the internet, of the ones featuring the fridge of course, when Kylo comes back upstairs.

“You took pictures  _with the fridge_?” He asks, sounding kind of disturbed.

“Why not?” Poe replies cheerily.

“Don’t you have a sense of hygiene?”

Rose is inclined to agree with him.

“Hey, I took a shower just after I came back up and I disinfected my hands first thing, I’m  _not_  an idiot,” he grins, and Kylo just shakes his head and moves closer to the counter.

“Please tell me there’s some coffee left,” he sighs.

“Sure,” she says, “but it’s Italian. I mean, the strong kind of. Those three haven’t had the courage to try it yet, but —”

“I’m  _absolutely_  fine with espresso, thank you.”

She hands him a cup, deciding that one on one he’s  _way_  nicer than he looked like in college two years ago before he dropped his then-circle of friends and made friends with Rey. And he thanks her every time she hands him breakfast, which is  _way_  more than she could say for both her current roommates — damn, she’s supposed to be here a full year so she hopes she gets to change both before then.

“Ben, you should  _totally_  take a picture with the fridge, it’s black exactly like your outfit!” Rey calls from the table.

“Forget it,” he says, and drinks the entire cup in one go.

If anything, Rose has a new respect for him after  _that_.

But yeah, no, she’s not taking pictures with the damned fridge either, especially because she knows it’s gonna stay there for the next month  _at least_.

 

> **Chapter Four: The Last Cappuccino**

 

“Hey,” Poe tells Finn on day six, when Rose is off doing some uni stuff she couldn’t delay and Rey’s off with  _Kylo Ren_ going around  _cemeteries_ or so it seems, while the two of them have opted for a nice, quiet stroll in the center before going back to Rose’s in the afternoon, “you know what, I haven’t had cappuccino yet.”

“Oh, right, and your mom is going to kill you if you don’t try it?”

“Well, she  _did_  tell me that before I left,” he grins back. “And I mean, I can’t tell Rose to get milk when she doesn’t like it just because  _I_  want to try it.”

Finn grins back at him, and damn but Poe  _loves_ how he smiles, all right? “Tell you what, we can find a bar and you can try your  _cappuccino_  while I get orange juice or whatever.”

“Hey, since I’m getting milk and coffe and I’m dragging you with when you’re lactose intolerant, I think the orange juice will be on me, how about  _that_?”

“Fair,” Finn grins. “Well, there’s a bar over there. Any place is good, right?”

“Right.”

Poe checks his phone just before walking in — right. 11.30 AM — the perfect time for a break, they can have lunch in a couple hours and he’ll have had his coffee right when he usually gets it back in the States. Piece of cake, right?

The bar’s small but nice, and they have a few seats at the counter. He heads for the check-out, noticing that there’s just one person manning that and the bar.

“ _Buongiorno_ ,” he says, grinning — hell, he’s been here for almost a week, he has at least  _that_  down.

“Hello,” the girl replies, smiling back. “What can I get you?”

“Uh, Finn? Still set on the orange juice?”

“Yeah,” Finn confirms as he takes a seat.

“Right. Orange juice for him, a cappuccino for me.”

The smile dies on the barista’s face, or at least, it becomes  _way_ smaller. “Cappuccino?” She asks again.

“Uh, yeah. Is there some problem?”

“It’s half past eleven,” she argues.

“… Okay?” He asks, not getting the point.

She stares at him. He stares back. Then she raises her hands in what looks like a  _defeat_  gesture. What the hell?

“Your funeral,” she says, and makes the cappuccino with a disgusted face before moving to Finn’s orange juice. Or better, freshly squeezed orange juice rather than getting it from the bottle.

They sit. He drinks the coffee. It’s actually good.

“Hey,” he whispers, “any idea of why she looked that put off?”

“No idea,” Finn says, whipping out his phone. “Good thing they have wi-fi. Let me look it up — oh.”

“ _Oh_?”

“Apparently they don’t drink cappuccino after 11 AM — it’s like, strictly breakfast food and you’re not supposed to have milk past that. And 11 AM is the limit.”

“Oh, dear, don’t tell me that —”

“You  _kinda_  came off as the typical American tourist who barbarically drinks coffee and milk after the allotted time, yes.”

He groans. Exactly what he had hoped to avoid.

He looks down at his innocent-looking cup, then he shrugs and takes another drink. “Well, whatever. It’s  _good_ ,” he proclaims. “But you  _aren’t_  telling my mother I came off as the typical barbarian tourist when I’m not even  _technically_  American.”

“I don’t know,” Finn grins back, “if you give me enough reasons to  _not_  do it before we’re back home —”

Poe, at this point, doesn’t even mind if the barista realizes what the hell they’re discussing here.

“I think,” he says, “I might make it worth your while.”

“Then no one’s ever going to know you completely failed in your endeavor of looking like a refined tourist with no barbaric habits,” Finn smiles, his fingers threading with Poe’s under the table.

Poe thinks he can  _definitely_  make it worth his while, later.

And he’s not going to drink cappuccino past 11 AM if it kills him, even if it’s  _damn good._

 

> **Chapter Five: The B-Line: A Typical Roman Story**

 

“Damn,” Rey says as she checks her phone, “I have bad news.”

“What, there’s a public transport strike?”

“I see that Rose schooled you,” she grins, and  _damn_ , he needs to get a grip.  _Why_  can’t he either just move on or just  _tell_  her? Then again, all things considered, it’s a miracle they’re even friends by now. He’s not going to risk ruining it. “But no, it’s — we’re kind of late. If we want to make that appointment by seven PM we need to take the subway.”

_Fuck_.

“Do we?” Ben asks her, trying to sound like he doesn’t mind even if he perfectly knows that  _she_  knows why he’d ask.

After all,  _she_  knows what went down with Snoke more than anyone else bar his therapist does, so she knows he doesn’t deal well with a lot of people in closed spaces.

“Well, from here it takes just around half an hour or some more. The bus —” She checks something on her phone, then shakes her head. “We should change three and it’d take one hour and twenty minutes  _if_ they pass on time.”

Well,  _fuck._

“I suppose we can do that much,” he sighs, cursing to hell and back that he picked the Protestant cemetery —  _fine_ , he  _did_  really want to go on Keats’s grave and Shelley’s and for  _reasons_ , mainly, that he spent his teenage years ruining poetry paperbacks with their names on the cover, but he hadn’t realizes that the area’s only goodconnection with the place they should meet Rose and the others at was the damned  _subway_.

Which he really, really,  _really_  loathes. Same as enclosed spaces. Same as spaces  _full of people_ , but at least on the bus you can look out of the window.

Not on the subway.

“Come on,” she says, “the sooner we go the sooner we’re there.”

She’s right, as usual, obviously, so he sighs and follows her into the Piramide station and walks down the stairs.

He  _doesn’t_ like how a  _lot_  of people join them on the platform coming from the attached train station — what the  _hell_?

“That’s the train going to the sea,” Rey informs him. “Rose told me. Apparently it’s full of commuters both ways.”

“Shit,” he says. “Well, never mind. Let’s just be done with it.”

They take the metro. The train, Ben notices with terror, is  _old_ , and there’s no A/C on, which means that the moment they take it  _surrounded by a bunch of other people_  that most likely are all going to the last stop, same as the two of them.

Fuck. He hopes they get to sit at the only switch point, he decides, and the moment the train leaves he starts taking deep breaths the way his uncle said  _always_  worked back when he taught him yoga classes  _years_  ago.

At least Rey’s sticking to his side — even  _too_  much, given how much people are on this trap of a train. Which is  _not_  a good thing when you’ve had a crush on her for years and given that you treated her fairly badly the first few months that you knew each other you still are marveling that she gave you a second chance.

_Ben Solo, get a fucking grip_ , he thinks, figuring that at least his therapist would be overjoyed that he’s not breaking the damned handset already.

They pass the switch point. They don’t get to sit. He has another twenty minutes on this trap at least, but hopefully they’re going to pass quick. Fuck, in what civilized place people use trains that must have been new in the fucking early nineties? He doesn’t know, but evidently  _here_.

Anyway. It’s hot and he’s sweating and he’ll need a change of clothes back home, but he’s breathing and everything’s more or less fine and people will have to start getting down at some point —

Then the train abruptly stops in the middle of the fucking tunnel.

Then the lights go out for a moment, then they’re on again.

_What the fuck_.

Rey grabs his arm,  _good_ , because he was starting to get worried here, and he can hear people grumbling and complaining, but the bad thing is —

“Is it just me,” he asks Rey, “or everyone is dealing with this as if it was a  _normal occurrence_?”

“I — I think you’re right,” she confirms, glancing around. Not that it’s easy, given that she’s pressed in between another five people and she can’t move and  _neither can he_.

Shit.

_Shit._

Right. He has to just breathe and keep his shit together — he’s never heard of anyone dying in the Rome underground and they won’t be the first.

He glances at his watch.

It’s been five full minutes.

People are still grumbling.

“I suppose no news yet?” He whispers. Right. That  _didn’t_  sound like he was about to lose his shit.

“No, but I’m surrounded by three old ladies, I doubt they’d tell  _me_.”

Right. Little old ladies probably don’t speak English.

Fine.

Fine _._

_It’s going to be —_

A moment later, he hears  _someone_  talk to through the train’s speakers — maybe the driver? Who even would know —

And then people start  _screaming in protest_ , what the hell, and  _no_ that’s exactly what he doesn’t need, damn it but after that year with Snoke he can’t handle people just screaming out of nowhere —

Then he notices that Rey’s talking to some younger kid who was somewhere behind the old ladies and hopefully filling her in. She nods, biting her lip, and then turns her eye on him.

“Did he tell you  _what the fuck_  is going on?” He asks.

“Yes,” she says, “and you won’t like it. Just — he said it’s not unheard of.”

“Okay. Shoot. What is the damned problem?”

“It’s raining outside. This train’s old. This line is also not as new as it could be. There’s been some electrical short-circuit and so the train’s not working.”

“It’s  _not working_?”

“No, and — the driver said that he’s going to open the doors shortly and we should walk to the next station.”

“What the — isn’t that  _dangerous_?”

“Apparently they shut down the rest of the traffic.”

“Oh fuck — we need to  _walk_  into that tunnel that might actually be half-flooded?”

He thinks he’s  _this_  close to just punch the nearest little old Italian lady who is screaming  _something_  in the vague direction of the train’s ceiling and making his head pound, but a moment later Rey’s hand has grabbed his and –

“Hey,” she says, “it’s  _fine_. And we’ll be out of here before you know it. Shit, maybe we should’ve taken the bus for real.”

“We would’ve been late,” he answers, trying to keep his voice from shaking too much. So what if he threads his fingers with hers, though? At least he has an excuse to, now.

“Yeah, well, they’d have handled the two of us being late if the choice was sticking you in here. I’m sorry, I  _knew_ , but —”

“Rey, it’s not your fault if this place is beautiful but run so incompetently that even fucking Hux would do better.”

“Wow, you  _really_  have a low opinion of these people, don’t you?”

“ _Don’t you_?”

“Fair enough, it’s terrible. But seriously, I didn’t mean —”

“Rey, if  _anyone else_  was here I think I’d have broken down the damned door myself,” he blurts, and he’s going to blame it on the fact that he’s not thinking straight, but a moment later the train lurches forward and she about ends up slammed against him and she ends up  _over_  him, and he loses balance which in turn means that he doesn’t almost murder a little old lady just because the woman moves sideways and some guy behind him manages to grab him by the shoulders.

Thing is —

He doesn’t really handle when if  _other people_  have their hands on him but Rey’s face is just above his and —

“Fuck it,” she says,  _what_ , and then she’s grabbed at his shoulders and put his weight off the poor guy behind him and her mouth’s on his and —

Wait,  _are they kissing_?

For — he spends months imagining it and now they’re doing it on a damned crowded subway that’s also conveniently stuck down a tunnel?

People start clapping. Someone whistles. Rey’s hands are on his face and her tongue is moving against his and he’s not thinking about how they’re surrounded by people at all.

Well then.

_Fuck it_ , indeed, he decides, and kisses her back the way he had hoped he would get to one day, and she moans into his mouth and people clap harder and —

Right.

He doesn’t think he minds being stuck in here that much, after all.

——

_Later_ , Rose tells him that this is the  _second_  video of him doing something while on vacation here going viral on YouTube.

“What?”

“Someone filmed you kissing on the metro. A lot of people are wondering what are you going to do next because there should be a third to  _complete the trilogy_.”

Rey snorts into her wine and both Finn and Poe don’t even try to say anything — they’re on the sofa clutching at each other for how hard they’re laughing.

“It wasn’t on  _purpose_ ,” he protests.

“You know what,” Poe wheezes, “you should totally grab that fridge, load it onto Rose’s car, drag it to the nearest place where they dispatch that shit, then you can go on a rant about how this mayor’s completely incompetent since she needs an American barbarian tourist who drinks cappuccino after 11 AM to get fridges off her streets.”

“I  _wouldn’t_  drink cappuccino past 11 AM,” Ben replies, wondering what the hell Poe’s getting at. “I have better taste than that.”

Finn starts laughing so hard he  _cries_.

Ben  _does_  like Rey’s friends more than his old ones but honestly, he doesn’t even want to know what their deal is right now.

“You haven’t said no yet,” Rey grins.

He looks at her, finding himself grinning back without even realizing it, and then —

Hey.

He came here also to have fun and relax a bit, and honestly, he  _could_ carry that damned thing anyway.

“Fair enough,” he says, “tomorrow we’re taking the fridge, I guess.”

“Well,” Rose says, “I guess it’s going to go viral, too.”

——

It  _does_  go viral.

Rose laughs for twenty minutes before explaining him exactly what kind of insults the mayor’s supporters have left on his Facebook profile that they must have tracked down.

“What kind of people use… belonging to the adversary party as an insult if the adversary party isn’t, well, fascist or whatever?” He asks, very puzzled.

“I suppose people who are less competent than Hux at running  _anything_ ,” Poe says in between laughing fits.

Ben decides that for once he’s going to agree with Poe — it  _does_  make sense that they’d stoop to a level that asshole never even reached because even he has more class than that.

Someone having more class than Hux.

What has the world come to, anyway?

 

End.


End file.
